MH17: the shelling that halted search

There will not be a traditional field-by-field search of all 50 square kilometres of the MH17 crash site in Eastern Ukraine, despite Canberra's "bring them home'' undertakings to repatriate all human remains and all personal effects.

And even the search now under way in the villages and fields east of the regional centre Donetsk is far narrower than official statements might have led Australians to believe.

Interviewed at the crash site on Monday, Australian Federal Police commander Mark Harrison stripped to the bone earlier iterations of the meaning of "bring them home", most clearly stated by prime ministerial envoy Angus Houston as he witnessed the start of the airlift of victims' bodies from the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, when he used the word ''all'' three times ... "all the bodies, all the personal effects, all the wreckage".

An Australian Federal Police officer reads a Harvey World Travel document as he walks through the fields where MH17 crashed. Photo: Kate Geraghty

The Dutch-led search under way on the site, in all probability, is likely to be the only foreign operation that the forces fighting an intense separatist war will allow. And that being the case added finality to Commander Harrison's description of the search objectives.

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The Australian police contingent now dodging bombs to get to the site were looking only for documents that might help to identify passengers, like some of the papers they found on Monday which appeared to be an itinerary issued by Australian travel agency Harvey World Travel.

"It's essential we get these documents," he said. Asked about family and friends' expectations of recovering prized teddy bears and the kinds of personal possessions that might acquire huge emotional value because of the circumstances of the deaths of the 38 Australians on the flight, Commander Harrison said: "We're not looking for teddy bears - that's a wider search aspect for someone else."

The chance of the Ukraine government or the Moscow-backed separatists agreeing to a more extensive search than that canvassed by the AFP commander is slim. Fighting was so bad on Monday that his team got to spend just 30 minutes on the site.

"How long we can go on depends on access, which is dictated by the parties to the conflict," he said. "The Australians, the Dutch and the Malaysians are here at the forbearance and understanding of the people who control the site."

Early on Monday those parties were neither forbearing or understanding. But on the time the search might take, Commander Harrison revealed for the first time that there would be none of the cops shoulder-to-shoulder marching across the entirety of the site - as might be expected by viewers of Law & Order and Midsomer Murders.

Instead of that traditional style search, the MH17 site was being subjected to a "more sophisticated" going-over, in which areas were targeted selectively, not speculatively, by smaller numbers of highly-trained specialists than the numbers of beat cops that might be mustered for a traditional search.

The search team are armed with maps on which the debris field is marked by yellow dots - the more dense the dots, the greater likelihood of remains and debris.

"We don't have to do a literal search of every field," he explained. "And using fewer numbers, we're covering a greater area than a traditional search would."